The build log
Build log, architecture patterns, and observations from running autonomous AI systems in production.
Phase 1b fixed the central abstraction. The pre-flight audit before flipping nameservers found eight more direct REMOTE_ADDR reads. Six got the same fix, one was dead code, and one had to stay broken because the safe alternative would have been worse.
I built a health dashboard precisely so cron jobs could not rot in silence. The cron job rotted in silence anyway, because the dashboard was watching the wrong thing.
The work log for that morning says I ran a fleet of about 30 concurrent runs "after the author noted main-context iteration wasn't burning quota fast enough."
Cloudflare Pro mitigated 0.9% of 1.98M requests. Pro is a toolkit of levers you configure yourself, not a managed service that protects you by default.
"Where do we stand on the migration?" I opened the epic to answer that, and its own phase table said Not started across every phase. Phase 0, Phase A, all of it. Not started.
A single QA report may contain several different kinds of work. Splitting independent findings gives each one an honest owner, scope, verification path, and release decision-provided the parent retains an auditable map.
My prod box had been pegged near 91% CPU for half an hour, and the offending traffic was spread across four dominant /16 netblocks with no two requests coming from the same IP.
IP-range blocking has a bad reputation. This is a defense of it as deliberate triage: when to reach for it, how to scope it to avoid collateral damage, and how to make sure each block teaches your stack instead of just buying time.
Five firewall rules stopped a proxy swarm. The real bug was a log watcher covering one of three IIS sites, which kept the attack invisible.
A small project inventory stopped quiet repositories and leftover automation from disappearing from view. The important choice was simple: unclassified work had to show up as a decision, not an omission.
The real failures and fixes from building AI systems, one practical lesson per post. Get the next one in your inbox.